India Unbound excerpts

We have read an interesting book, India Unbound by Gurcharan Das. First written in 2000 and revised in 2002, Das examines how the economic reforms of 1991 have led to a huge increase in entrepreneurialism and a rising middle class in India. Here are some quotes from the book, which have given us much fodder for discussion. We hope you find them interesting too:

“The theme of this book is how a rich country became poor and will become rich again. India had more than a fifth of the world’s wealth and a quarter of the world’s trade in textiles in 1700. It has seen its share decline to less than 5% of world income and less than half a percent of world trade in 1995. It may not have become poorer in absolute terms but compared to the rest of the world, it did get left behind. We have gotten so used to the inequalities between rich and poor countries that we the astonishing truth that living standards around the world were roughly equal in 1750 –everyone was poor. Even in 1850 things were not very different. Today the average person in the developed world is ten to twenty times richer. This happened …because of the capitalist breakthrough, which began in England between 1760 and 1820 with the invention of the cotton gin and the steam engine, followed by waves of technological innovations…railroad, steamship, steel…electricity…the automobile…the chip and computers. With the emergence of Japan and the Far East in the last quarter century, the world became a global economy.
India did not participate in this great adventure. We grew up believing that our “mixed economy” …though not as efficient as capitalism, was better because it cared for the poor. It was better than communism because it preserved political freedoms. But its problem was of performance, not of faith. If it had worked, most of the third world would be more prosperous today. Indians have learned from painful experience that the state does not work on behalf of the people. More often than not, it works on behalf of itself.” P.348-9

“In Hindu society the Brahmin (priest, teacher) is at the top of the four-caste hierarchy, followed by the Kshatriya (variously landholder, warrior, ruler). The Vaishya or bania (businessman) comes third, and the Shudra (laborer, artisan) is last. Below the four are the casteless “untouchables” and tribals. The three upper castes constitute roughly 15% of India’s population, and have ruled the country for 3000 years. About half of India is laboring or Shudra caste, divided in turn into hundreds of subcastes. Some are occupational-cobblers and carpenters, for example- others are geographic. More than 20% of the population are the casteless or “untouchables” and tribals for whose uplift Mahatma Gandi worked all his life. The remaining 15% of India belongs to other religions: 11 % Muslim, the rest Sikh, Christian, Parsee, etc.” P. 140

“It was estimated that in the mid 90’s the middle or consuming class was 32.5 million households. Since there are roughly 5 persons in a household, this means that the middle class was 169 million or 18% of the population. This household income is between Rs 45,000 and Rs 215,000 (US$ 1,000-5,000) and typically owns a TV, cassette recorder, pressure cooker, ceiling fan, bicycle and wristwatch. Two-thirds of this consuming class owns a scooter, color TV electric iron, blender and sewing machine, but less than half own a refrigerator.
(Of course, the penetration of TV’s, bicycles, radios and fans goes far beyond the middle class-TV’s are in over 62 million homes, bicycles in 80 million, wristwatches in 125 million and fans in 50 million homes.) Most striking is this consuming middle class appears to have tripled in 10 years. This middle class is projected to reach 91 million households by 2007, or 450 million people. “ P. 287


“Poor teamwork is pervasive in India…. I asked my cousin, Usha Kumar, if it had something to do with the Indian personality. She is a trained psychologist and she pointed me to Sudhir Kakar, the author of the Inner World: A Psycho-analytic Study of Childhood and Society in India. Kakar said that it begins with the Indian bride, who is not fully accepted into her husband’s home until she produces a male child. She is so grateful when a son is born that she indulges him to excess. As the boy grows up he remains close to the mother and distant from the father. The end result is that the boy grows up narcissistic and has a weak ego.
The adult Indian male personality that emerges from various psychologists’ accounts has a weak sense of self, one that needs the support of authority figures. He is less comfortable on his own. He needs appreciative, older, hierarchical figures, even late in his professional life.
It is difficult to say how valid this hypothesis is in the absence of broad socio-psychological data. Never-the-less, there seems to be near-universal agreement about this Indian personality among professionals.” P. 43

“Years later, my grandfather admitted that he was a little sad to see the British go and said “It is certainly nice to feel the fresh breeze of freedom, but you must remember, my son, that India had been the best-governed country in the world for a hundred years. Why, Britain itself was not as well ruled because it was, after all, a messy parliamentary democracy, and it was not run by the Indian civil service…. Yes, the English were arrogant, but it was a cheap price to pay for a hundred years of peace, good government, railways, irrigation canals, and the best law and order in the world. You may call me antinational, but this is how I feel.”” P. 52

“In my highschool in Washington I was surprised that we had to attend a class called “shop”. We learned to repair a window, make a table, or unclog a sink. At the end of the year, we had lost our fear of technology. We had understood Bronowski’s dictum that the world is understood through the hand, not the mind-the hand is the cutting edge of the mind. It explains why many Americans are “tinkerers”. This is a powerful idea for India, where we have traditionally had contempt for manual labor because of our caste system.” P.71

“I have found it frustrating that Indian intellectuals and political leaders are so anti-American that they are unable to perceive the qualities of America. The American education system has many flaws, but it is far fairer (and more creative) than most systems.” P. 80

“Although Americans think of themselves as individualistic, they have historically had a rich civil society…They have a dense network of voluntary organizations: churches, professional groups, charitable institutions, neighbourhood clubs and so on. (However, this rich associational life has weakened in the last generation as family life has deteriorated.) In contrast, the social life of Indians revolves around the family or caste. It does not encompass the whole community. Perhaps this is why our streets are dirty when our homes are spotlessly clean.” P. 81

“After the abolition of untouchability in 1950, the most dramatic development relating to caste occurred in 1990. Vishwanath Pratap Singh, the aristocrat turned politician (and able finance minister under Rajiv Gandhi), needed an electoral platform to differentiate himself from other politicians. Socialism had run out of steam. Mrs. Gandhi’s populism had been discredited. Singh looked for a gap and found it in the “backwardness of the “other backward castes” (OBC’s). These were the laboring Shudra majority, fully half the country’s population-barbers, carpenters, cobblers, goat herders, other artisans, and farm labor-who had lacked a political voice. In comparison, the Dalits had already found a voice in politics and there were programs in place to lift them, and the upper castes had always looked after themselves nicely for 3000 years…. The OBC movement spread like wildfire in the north Indian heartland. The upper castes were horrified. Suddenly another 50 % of the government jobs and places in colleges might be denied to them. With 20% of the jobs already reserved for the Dalits, they realized that if the OBC demand succeeded only 30% of future seats would be available on merit. It was an invitation for a caste war. And it came… The logic of the ballot box was too strong. Singh, as Prime Minister of a coalition government, tried to fulfill his election promise, but his attempts to increase reservations became mired in the courts. However, the succeeding Congress government of Narasimha Rao seized the opportunity to win the OBC vote. It enacted legislation raising the reservations of OBCs to 30%. Thus 50% of government jobs and seats in colleges are today based on criteria other than merit.” P.146

Das quoting a childhood teacher and the wisdom he imparted to him. “There are three kinds of knowledge: Knowledge of the world, of the self and of God.
Knowledge of the world came through reason and physical sciences. Knowledge of the self came partially from psychology and the social sciences. But for the knowledge of God one had to turn to the Gita. The Gita taught that knowledge from books was not enough-it had to be combined with action and it had to be experienced.” P. 294

Das commenting on remarks by Public Policy Specialist- Francis Fukuyama about prosperity in the modern, western world.
“There is also a bleak side to Fukuyama’s generally sunny vision. It is that bourgeois life tends to become consumerist, lonely, banal and unheroic. The irony of liberalism is that it gives the individual free space in order to fashion his life, but he is unable to cope with the free space and fills it with trivial objects. Without a God or ideology, bourgeois life is reduced to the endless pursuit of cars, VCRs, cell phones and channel surfing. The reference point is self, and the individual becomes self-absorbed in a world of physical security and rational consumption. Even when it comes to sport and exercise, one prefers to jog rather than play team sports. Without a higher moral purpose, there are no heroic acts to perform. Is this the life that India has to look forward to in this century?
Although India may compress the economic timetable and become prosperous in the next 25 years, I believe it will not lose out o religiosity quite as rapidly as the west and Far East. Religion has a powerful place in Indian life, and the persistence of God will be its strongest defense. However, the challenge will be to keep religion a private matter.”
P. 309


Gurcharan Das is the author of three plays and a novel, A Fine Family (1990). He is also a columnist for the Times of India and other newspapers. He graduated from Harvard College and attended Harvard Business School. A former CEO of Procter & Gamble India, he is currently a venture capitalist and a consultant to industry and government. He lives with his wife in New Delhi.